Fatal (29 page)

My coat rustled so loudly I wanted to rip it off and leave it in the hall, but we had to go back outside. My fingers were only now really getting any feeling back into them, and they were bright red. Going out without the coat would mean hypothermia. So the noisy coat had to stay.

His coat didn't seem to rustle so much? What was so special about him? He seemed so good at sneaking around like this, and it made me wonder how many other houses his family had broken into and taken over.

Vick seemed to know the place better than I did. He went in front, checking through doorways, glancing up the stairs when we passed them. We got to the main hall and I looked down at the kitchen. Light came out under the door. Was someone in there?

So far, we hadn't encountered any of the nine people Vick claimed were in here from his family.

I wanted to ask him where everyone was, but neither of us had spoken since the
library. The silence was palpable.

Chapter 44

We got to the basement door. He opened it slowly, trying to avoid any creaks.

The basement itself was flooded with shadow. I reached my hand up, trailing it along the smooth wall, and
flicked the light on. The shadows evaporated, leaving only the empty stairwell, and the vacant hall beyond that.

He went down first, keeping his feet to the side of the stairs to avoid as much noise as possible.

I followed him down in a semi-crouch. My thighs burned from all this skulking, but I didn't think it was okay to stand up straight, yet.

From the bottom of the stairs, I saw the door. The light reflected from the metal bands reinforcing it. It was dark through the barred window, which was strange. There was a skylight in the ceiling, I knew, so that he could feel the light of the sun and change back into a human being.

I started forward, but Vick caught my wrist. His eyes told me he was worried.

"What?" I said.

"There's something wrong. This is too easy."

It felt like my entire body pebbled with goosebumps. I glanced back up the stairs. We'd left the basement door open. There was no one there.

It was really strange that we hadn't seen anyone yet. The kitchen light was on, and that was the only indication there was anyone here but Vick, Adam, and me.

"What do you want to do?" I said.

I looked back over at the reinforced door. Adam was so close. If I called to him now, he'd hear me. But who else would?

"I don't know yet," Vick said.

Tension radiated from him as he crouched by the wall, looking with suspicion all around the hallway and up the stairs.

We'd come so far already. I couldn't stand the thought of sneaking back out of the
house without Adam, going through those woods again and climbing into Jim's truck.

"We can't leave him here!" I said, my voice rising.

He shot me a look, and I tried to quiet myself again.

"Let's just get Adam and then get out of here. If we leave now, I doubt we'll be able to get inside as easily again," Vick said.

It sounded good to me.

We started down the hall and got to the door. I tried to look in through the window, but it was too dark to see much of anything. I thought I saw someone lying in the middle of the floor, but I couldn't be certain.

All the same, my heart tried to escape through my throat.

I grabbed the handle and twisted, praying it wasn't locked. The door opened, letting more of the light from the hall spill inside.

"Adam!" I said, rushing in.

He was chained to the floor.
As in literal manacles. Vick's family had bolted the things to the floor, and he was bound, hand and foot. He was on his back, wearing the clothes I'd seen him in the night of the trap.

The chains kept him spread-eagled on the floor, almost no slack to them at all.

I knelt beside him, looking into his face. He was unconscious.

"Adam! Adam! Wake up; it's me,
Steph," I said, holding his head and stroking at his stubbled cheeks with my thumbs.

I looked over my shoulder for Vick. Where was he?

"Come on, help me get him free," I said.

Vick was standing in the doorway, his back to me. It took me a second to realize there was another man in front of him.

An involuntary yelp burst through my lips. I took a protective position over Adam, who was starting to groan on the floor.

"Vick..." I said.

Someone tore away whatever was covering the skylight. Yellow sunbeams shot through into the darkness as I squinted up. There were people standing on the roof, looking down into the room. At least five or six of them. What was going on?

What I felt went beyond your standard "sinking feeling." It was like I was standing over a bottomless pit on a single, thin string.
A string about to break.

"Dad, you don't understand," Vick said.

"No, I understand perfectly. You like this girl here, and she likes the monster. So you're trying to let him go instead of doing what you know is right."

Vick's father had a deep voice, the tone of it telling me he was used to using it to tell people what to do. A voice whose speaker knew he was always in the right.

Vick shot a look over his shoulder at me. It was a look of desperate confusion.

"Dad, he hasn't killed anyone! It was a guy from that fraternity you put me in. He killed that girl. Adam hasn't hurt anyone."

"It hasn't hurt anyone... yet," Vick's father said, putting a hand on his son's shoulder. Vick shrugged him away after a moment. Good! He wasn't giving in.

"I know how you feel. Trust me, Victor, Adam Arnold is a monster. We're doing him, and the world, a favor by putting him down. If we let him go, sooner or later his true nature will assert itself, and he will kill. All that blood, all those
lives, they'll be on you."

"You don't know that..." Vick said. I could see him trembling. At his sides, his hands kept clenching and unclenching, "I won't kill him, dad. You can't make me."

Vick's father sighed. Adam's groans increased beneath me. His manacles clattered against the bare floor.

"
Steph...? What's going on?" Adam said.

"Quiet, Adam. We're getting you out of here," I hissed down at him.

"No, Victor, I don't believe I can make you. Then again, I don't have to. Adam is going to make you kill him."

"What are you talking about?
Dad!" Vick yelled.

I looked up in time to see Vick's father give him a shove, sending him a few steps back into the room. Then he slammed the door shut. I heard a lock click. Vick grabbed at the handle inside and wrenched at the door, but it wouldn't budge. He clung to the bars in the window.

"Dad! What are you doing? Let us out!"

"Why... Why am I chained down?" Adam said, looking at the thick steel manacles on his wrists and ankles.

Vick grabbed fistfuls of his hair and squeezed. Then he pounded against the door again. When his father didn't let us out, he came over to me, kneeling beside Adam.

"Let's get him out of these chains," Adam said, reaching for the little metal pegs holding the manacles in place.

Something metallic flew between the bars in the door and clattered sharply against the floor. Vick turned at the sound, rushed over, and picked it up.

I
t was a knife. A silver-bladed knife. I watched the light reflect from the precious metal.

"I'm not killing him, dad! I'm setting him free!" Vick said, flinging the knife away.

"You don't have a choice, Victor. Either he dies, or he kills you and the girl. Make the right choice, son."

"What is he talking about?" I said, struggling to pull out the metal pin in the manacle holding his right arm down. It was really jammed in there.

There was a sharp noise from the skylight. Instinctively, I recoiled back as something flashed by my face. My eyes scrunched shut.

Adam screamed.

Chapter 45

When I opened my eyes again, he arched his back high in the air. Two electrodes from a
taser had buried themselves in his chest and stomach. The current hummed through them, into his body.

It let up for a moment and his body relaxed. I reached for him, but then the
y gave him another jolt.

Vick ran over and yanked the electrodes out. There was blood on the barbs, and dark spots formed on his shirt where those little steel claws dug in.

Tears leaked out of his and down his cheeks.

"Stop it!" I screamed at the silhouettes in the skylight looking down at us. The leads from the
taser led up to one of them, and I thought I could just make out the evil little device in the person's hand.

"
Steph... I... I can't hold it back. You need to get out," Adam said.

At first, I was so shocked (I hate using that word to describe my feelings, but it fits better than any other) that I didn't grasp his meaning.

I knelt down beside him, holding his face in my hands, wiping his tears away with my thumbs. He squeezed his eyes shut.

"
It's okay, Adam. We're getting out."

"You have to... go!" he said.

When his eyes opened, they were yellow. He'd lost control. His body already trembled, the chains rattling on the floor, as it changed.

I held his face, putting mine close to his.

"No! You can stop it. Listen to my voice, Adam, use it. Follow my voice, let it lead you out of that place," I said, repeating myself to him.

From the corner of my eye, I noticed Vick pick up the knife. I couldn't say anything, though. I had to save all my words for Adam.

At first, I thought I was helping. Then he arched his back again so hard that he held his body up with his heels and the back of his head.

He howled in rage and desperation, unable to contain it. I wanted to move back to his side, but the hot fear coursing through my body balked at that command.

He was going to transform with us in the room, and Vick's father had locked the door.

Something tore, the noise setting my teeth on edge. At first, I thought it was Adam's flesh. It wasn't; the arms of his jacket had split off from the rest of it as his shoulders expanded.

The next was his shirt, splitting open to show his bare stomach and chest. His ribs shifted under his skin, cracking and bending into a new shape. I closed my eyes, but the sound of it churned my stomach almost as bad as the sight.

I backed up until I hit the wall. Clutching at myself, I watched him.

It was as fascinating as it was awful. The proverbial train-wreck people couldn't tear their eyes from. His nose and mouth elongated, forming a snout even as long, cruel fangs jutted out from under his still-human lips.

His eyes
were the worst, though. He kept looking at me. I knew what he wanted. He wanted to scream at me to run, to get out of there. But I guess he no longer had the correct anatomy to talk anymore.

Thick black fur began sprouting all over his body even as his shirt ripped farther and his jeans split up. It erupted from his skin, covering him.

The steel bolts holding the chains to the floor shuddered as he wrenched at his bonds. They wouldn't hold, I knew. They weren't designed to hold.

Vick shifted the silver knife so that he held it with the point facing the floor. He wrapped both hands around the handle. His eyes were wide with fear and confusion as he looked up at me, and down at Adam. It wouldn't be long until Adam was fully transformed and strong enough to break free from his bonds.

"Kill him, Victor. Now, before he has a chance to kill you!" Vick's father yelled in.

Vick looked at the window, then at me.

"No, don't. You can't," I said.

"He'll kill us, Stephanie!" Vick said
, his fingers shifting on the knife handle.

"Adam won't hurt us!" I said. I could hear the terror in my voice.

"He won't be Adam much longer! He'd want us to do it. You know he would!"

Vick started walking towards Adam's writhing, groaning form. Adam's voice had changed into a deep, feral growl. When he saw Vick, he strained against the manacles. The bolts all came an inch out of the floor.

Vick went to one knee beside Adam and lifted the knife up high so that the sunlight caught on the blade.

Before I could give myself the chance to think about it, I rushed forward. I jumped over Adam. Vick threw an arm out reflexively, wrapping it around me as my inertia carried us both to the floor. I heard the knife clatter out of his grip.

"Get off of me, Stephanie! There's nothing we can do, now. We have to kill him before he breaks free!" Vick said, his lips inches from my ear as he spoke.

I couldn't hold him down for very long. He pushed me off, sending me rolling across the floor to stop against the wall.